


The Fall

by philaetos



Series: Carry On Countdown 2020 [3]
Category: Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: Baz is Icarus, Inspired by The Fall of Icarus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M, Simon is Apollo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:33:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27756193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philaetos/pseuds/philaetos
Summary: You were the sun, and I was crashing into youIcarus inspired AUWritten for the Carry On Countdown
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Series: Carry On Countdown 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2030371
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14
Collections: Carry On Countdown 2020





	The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Icarus is my favorite myth, and I’ve been obsessed by the idea of writing something Snowbaz inspired by Icarus’s story since I read that one quote, “You were the sun and I was crashing into you”
> 
> COC 2020 - Day 3 : Retelling

The wings Father built rest on my shoulders, the wax sticking uncomfortably to my back. It’s heavy and itchy, but it’s the price of freedom.

“Basilton.” Father’s voice sounds tired. I turned at him, facing his equally tired-looking face. “You must be careful. The wings work, but I am only a craftsman, not a magician, I cannot guarantee they won’t break. You have to follow me, and not fly too close to the sea. Or the sun ,” he adds, his eyes boring into me, his meaning clear. It’s not time for your foolish fantasies, Basilton. “It would damage the wings.”

I nod, but the heady feeling I have in my chest every time I look up at the sky, this dizziness more exhilarating than that caused by the strongest alcohols, is here, fiercer than ever.

Flying. Going up in the sky. Approaching the sun.

It’s my heart’s greatest desire. It’s all I’ve wanted, for as long as I can remember.

I watch as my father rises in the sky and starts flying, looking like the strangest of birds. A clockwork creature, going against the normal order of Nature. An atrocity, the most beautiful of them all. Horrifyingly beautiful.

Only when Father is so far away that I can barely see him do I jump, letting the wings carry me.

My heart is pounding in my chest as I rise in the air. It’s the oddest sensation.

My body is in no way connected to the ground but I’m not falling . It’s like floating in water, except it’s nothing like that. When I’m in the ocean, I can feel the waves around me, the pressure that keeps my body above water. There is something, as unchanging and certain Nature, protecting me from death. Now there are only those wings that Father handcrafted, those wings that are nothing but a mere human creation, not something the Gods have control over, those wings that could break.

Knowing that my life depends on them, on a couple of feathers and some wax makes his head spin, adrenaline rushing through my body.

I keep rising, and rising, and rising until the island I come from is only a memory, no longer something I can see, for all I can see is the sky, blue and seemingly infinite, the earth and water so far from me.

I raise my head, looking up at the sun, this bright golden circle I have always admired. Already when I was a child, I would spend hours lying on the ground, looking at the sky until my eyes were wet and burnt, or asking Father to tell me everything he knew about the Sun God.

When I grew up, I started looking for stories about the God on my own, and more than once I caught myself feeling a burning jealousy overtaking me when I thought about Hyacinth, who had loved the God and been granted the honor of being loved by Him in return. How much I wished I were him, even if it meant meeting the tragic fate of Hyacinth.

So I prayed, and prayed, and prayed. Made offerings. Worshipped the Sun like no other mortal before me, hoping the God would give me a sign that never came.

But I didn’t give up, because maybe if I persevered, He would eventually notice me.

But maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe I had to do more than this to be worthy of the Sun’s attention. Maybe I had to go meet him...

Determined, I look back at this glowing circle for a second. It seems so far away. Almost unreachable. But I had wings.

Nothing is too high when you can fly.

Ignoring all of Father’s warnings, I control the wing to make them take me higher, and higher, and higher. Nothing matters anymore except for the friction of the wind on the soft feathers and on my skin, cold at first, and then hotter, and hotter, and hotter as I draw closer, and closer, and closer to the sun.

The heat is unbearable. It’s turning my skin red as blood, filling my eyes up with tears and making me suffocate. Sweat is covering my entire body, running uncomfortably down my face and spine, but I don’t care. I know the sun is hot. The heat simply means I’m approaching Him...

Except something that isn’t sweat starts running down my back.

The wax.

It’s melting.

The wings are becoming less and less heavy each second, losing their feathers.

But I can’t give up now. I can’t go back to stay safe. I’m close, so close, closer than I’ve ever been, closer than I ever will be.

In a last, desperate gesture, I reach out with my shaking hand and whisper, each word causing excruciating pain in my dry throat “I tried to get to you.”

And I fell.

And fell.

And fell.

…

My whole body aches.

I try to open his eyes, slowly, but my eyelids are so heavy, like I just woke up from a long, very long night.

My sight is blurry at first and the bright light is blinding me but I still fight to keep my eyes open. I never closed them on the sun.

Once I can see clearly enough, I look around, completely lost. The last thing I remember is being up in the sky and now I’m lying on a beach. A shiver runs down my spine as I wonder if it had all been a dream and I was still stuck on my island.

But it can’t be.

This beach looks different from any I’ve seen on the island, and I’ve explored all of them, and nothing would justify the pain I feel down to my core.

“Hello.”

The voice that comes out of nowhere startles me, which only makes the pain worse.

I wince before looking around again. I didn’t see any sign that there was someone else on the beach the first time, but now I could see someone’s legs, so close that if I stretched my arm out, I would be able to grab their tawny calves.

I know that having a stranger so close to him when I’m too weak to run away should scare him, but instead, I only feel a pleasant warmth in my chest. I have this gut feeling that I know them. That I can trust them. I don’t know why, but my instinct is telling me that the stranger means me no harm.

As I open my mouth to answer something, the voice says “No, don’t speak. Your throat must be sore, it will only hurt you. I was waiting for you to wake up to give you this.”

The stranger sits down in the sand, right next to me. Now that I can see more of their body, I’m sure that they’re a man. Their voice had been deep, but not enough for me to be sure, while their body leaves no doubt.

The man hands me a cup. It looks as if it was made of pure gold. I had only seen such things in palaces. How could the man possess one, and why was he willing to let me drink out of it? Was he a prince? A king?

“Here, I will help you sit up,” the man says. His voice is gentle, but not as much as his arm, which slides around my shoulders to help me up.

It hurts terribly. The man’s warm skin pressed against my own wounded skin stings and burnt and every minute movement is torture. But at least now I can see the man’s face.

There are simply no words to describe such beauty except perfection, and even perfection feels like an understatement. The man’s face seems to have been carved by the Gods themselves. His skin is sun-kissed, freckles covering his straight nose and moles all over his face. He has thin lips and his eyebrows are arched beautifully over the most mesmerizing eyes Icarus I have seen. They look as blue as the ocean when the sun shines on it without obstacles, and they’re partly hidden by strands of hair like rays of light.

Seemingly completely unbothered by the way I’m contemplating him, like he’s used to being gaped at -with a beauty like his, he must be- the stranger says “Drink this, it will help with the pain, I promise.” as he raise the cup to my lips.

I don’t even hesitate. He pressed my lips against the warm metal of the cup, and as the man carefully tilts it, I drink the liquid that it contains. At first I thought it was water, but I know as soon as it falls on my tongue that it isn’t. It tasts like the sweetest of honey, but doesn’t feel as quite as thick on the tongue, flowing down my throat like the best of wines. It’s absolutely delicious, and like nothing I have ever tasted before.

As soon as I swallow it, my throat no longer feels dry and after a few seconds I even start to feel the pain in my body vanish.

“It’s magic! Where did you find that?” were the first words that went past my lips. My voice is a little raspy, but my throat no longer hurts as I speak.

It makes the man smile. “I am afraid that is something I cannot tell you, Baz.”

I frown. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

I’m sure I’ve never met this man, I would have remembered such perfection, so how could he know my childhood nickname?

“Honestly, I’m a little disappointed in you,” he says, amusement shining through his voice. “You’ve called my name so many times, I thought you would recognize me.”

“I... I’m not sure I understand you.”

Despite how uncomfortable I’m beginning to feel, I don’t try to move away from the man.

His hand on my back feels so warm and comforting, despite his intriguing words.

“Oh, sweet Basil. I thought you were smarter than this.”

There’s a spark of something I can’t quite place in the man’s eyes as he puts the goblet down to stroke my arm. I recoil slightly at the touch, not expecting it, but I’m quickly leaning into it, my eyes instinctively looking down at my arms.

That’s when I notice the burns. Everywhere, on both my arms and on my chest. In horror, I reach for my face with one of my hands, feeling the irregularities of burns there too, on my entire right cheek. My heart is pounding in my chest as fear rises in me, and the stranger must see the distress in my eyes because he says, in a comforting voice that sounds how sunshine feels on your skin, “They will heal, don’t worry. Your skin will scar, and it will never be as smooth as it used to be, but it will not stay as bad as it is right now.”

“How could you know?”

“I know how efficient the treatment I gave you is. And… Because it is I who caused you those burns,” he adds after a moment, looking away from me for the first time since our eyes met.

My own eyes go wide as the meaning of the words hits me. I crane my neck to look at the stranger, which I instantly regret for it hurts terribly, and whisper “The Sun. You’re the sun God.”

“I was starting to think you would never guess,” he says under his breath, with a softness to his voice.

It’s impossible. Gods don’t just show up on earth like that.

Except they do.

The sun God himself has done so, several times. I read and heard about all those stories.

“Why now? I have worshipped you everyday for years, praying for a sign, I have dedicated my life to you, I...”

“I have watched you for a while,” he interrupts me, still sounding so calm. “And you have grown on me, I must admit. It has been a while since a mortal made me feel that way. But it’s only when I saw you flying to the sun like that, risking it all for me, that I knew you were worth spending some time on earth for.”

His voice makes me feel at peace, and the touch of his fingers on my skin are a comfort. His presence is pleasant like lying under his light on a warm spring afternoon, but what he says, it feels like everything that is extreme about the sun. The scalding heat of it. The blinding brightness of it. The parts of Him that are so intense, so overwhelming, that they hurt in the most delightful way.

The God knows me. He feels something for me. He is here with me.

It’s more than I ever dreamed of and I feel like my heart could burst at any moment from all those emotions that are overtaking me.

“You’ve caught my eye, Baz. Do you realize how few mortals can achieve that?”

I do. I do and I can’t believe that I have achieved that. I’m not like any of the God’s mortal lovers, I have not been granted extraordinary beauty or skills like Daphne or Hyacinth, I’m just a boy, insane enough to fall in love with the Sun.

“My Lord, I… it is such an honour, I’m speechless...“

“Then don’t speak,” He said with a smile.

He leans in and I close my eyes, closing them on the sun for the first time, because for the first time, I cannot bear to see Him, a tear running down my damaged cheek.

I’ve never been kissed before, but I’m sure this feels different than a normal kiss. It’s like the light of the sun was spreading inside of me, a comforting warmth surrounding him. The lips pressed against mine taste like what heat feels like ; it’s a strange, but heady feeling

When He pulls away, He watches the tears rolling down my face with fondness before tenderly wiping them. “Why are you crying?”

“It’s too good to be true,” I admit, a little breathless.

The God’s thumb brushes my cheek again, but this time it isn’t to wipe my tears. It’s a soft, mundane gesture that I’ve seen so many lovers share. It makes my heart beat faster.

“And yet it is,” He whispers, leaning his forehead against mine “I’m here, Baz. For you.”

For me.

Maybe I’m just a fool in love with the sun. But the Sun loves me back.


End file.
